s impossible to hear each other speak and sleep was out of the question.
We lay in our bags expecting every second to have the covering torn from
above our heads, but the tough cloth held, and at midnight the gale began
to lull. In the morning the sun was out in a cloudless sky but the wind
never ceased entirely on the pass even though there was a breathless calm
among the trees a few hundred feet below.

My wife and I had just returned from inspecting our line of traps about
nine o'clock in the morning when the forest suddenly resounded with the
"hu-wa," "hu-wa," "hu-wa" of the gibbons. It seemed a long way off at
first, but sounded louder and clearer every minute. At the first note we
seized our guns and dashed down the mountain-side, slipping, stumbling, and
falling. The animals were in the giant forest about five hundred feet below
the summit of the ridge and as we neared them we moved cautiously from tree
to tree, going forward only when they called. It was one of the most
exciting stalks I have ever made, for the wild, ringing howls seemed always
close above our heads.

We were still a hundred yards away when a huge black monkey leaped out of a
tree top just as I stepped from behind a bush, and he saw me instantly. For
a full half minute he hung suspended by one arm, his round head thrust
forward staring intently; then launching himself into the air as though
shot from a catapult he caught a branch twenty feet away, swung to another,
and literally flew through the tree tops. Without a sound save the swish of
the branches and splash after splash in the leaves, the entire herd
followed him down the hill. It was out of range for the shotgun and my wife
was ten feet behind me with the rifle, but had I had it in my hand I doubt
if I could have hit one of those flying balls of fur.

We returned to camp with sorrow in our hearts, but two days later we
redeemed ourselves and brought in the first new gibbons. We were sitting on
a bed of fragrant pine needles watching for a squirrel which had been
chattering in the upper branches of a giant tree, when suddenly the wild
call of the monkeys echoed up the mountain-side.

They were far away to the left, and we ran toward them, stumbling and
slipping on the moss-covered rocks and logs, the "hu-wa," "hu-wa," "hu-wa"
sounding louder every moment. They seemed almost under us at times and we
would stand motionless and silent only to hear the howls die away in the
distance. At last